450w am i now pushing it

Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2014
Posts
1,696
Location
Caithness , Wick
Currently Using a Quality Superflower 450w gold PSU

, Will be jumping on board the latest and greatest once Volta/Turin Drops... whatever it maybe . Currently running a 1070 and am thinking maybe ill be pushing it once new cards drop . probs will push to 650w psu to give me headroom , but do we think a 450w will be capable of the load once I install the new card . see sig for specs
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Nov 2006
Posts
2,940
Location
London
450w is a lot for a system, even one that's overclocked. Unless you're running multi GPU's and loads of hard drives/peripherals, I think 450 is fine. Ideally you'd want to be running the PSU at 50-60% of it's capacity to get the best efficiency.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
If it's Golden Green HX is has third tier capacitors in bad for their cooling place.
And if that PSU has seen some years of use wouldn't go pushing its limits.

If you're going to get some high end graphics card and overclock also that 550W is would definitely update at least to 550W.
Overclocking can increase power consumption very fast if you increase voltage.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
29 Sep 2014
Posts
1,696
Location
Caithness , Wick
If it's Golden Green HX is has third tier capacitors in bad for their cooling place.
And if that PSU has seen some years of use wouldn't go pushing its limits.

If you're going to get some high end graphics card and overclock also that 550W is would definitely update at least to 550W.
Overclocking can increase power consumption very fast if you increase voltage.

2 years old atm , that’s weird Johnny gurus site has this as an overall 8.8 out of ten and explained all caps where of good quality ? Not a cheap unit concidering the wattage all though I’m sure there are better
450w is a lot for a system, even one that's overclocked. Unless you're running multi GPU's and loads of hard drives/peripherals, I think 450 is fine. Ideally you'd want to be running the PSU at 50-60% of it's capacity to get the best efficiency.

Kind of my reasoning for maybe pushing to a higher wattage unit was effiency , but I was also confident that it would be ample for a while , just unsure if a potential 250w tdp card would be playing it close .

Full confidence in super flower PSUs , also owning a 1200w platinum made me buy this psu over others .

Will see what the general concensus is , thanks for your inputs gents
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Nov 2006
Posts
2,940
Location
London
Get a watt meter, i bet your system won't be pulling more than 250w even when overclocked. I remember my old q6600 machine with 3 HDDs oced to 3.6ghz didn't pull more than 200w at load. Had a 8800gts then. The newer components just get more efficient with a similar power draw.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
2 years old atm , that’s weird Johnny gurus site has this as an overall 8.8 out of ten and explained all caps where of good quality ? Not a cheap unit concidering the wattage all though I’m sure there are better
Old original Golden Green used Chemicon capacitors making it extremely good for the price.
"Updated" Golden Green HX riding on brand is all cheap CapXons... also known as CrapXons.
https://diit.cz/clanek/recenze-supe...-450p14xehx-test/primarni-strana-vetev-5-v-sb
Less scrupulous brands use this kind bait and switch methods.


Get a watt meter, i bet your system won't be pulling more than 250w even when overclocked. I remember my old q6600 machine with 3 HDDs oced to 3.6ghz didn't pull more than 200w at load. Had a 8800gts then. The newer components just get more efficient with a similar power draw.
That CPU was such old that unless PSU was by then modern and had active PFC that reading wasn't accurate.
Cheap consumer power meters don't measure non-sinusoidal current power draws correctly and show reliable reading only for power factor corrected apliances.
 
Permabanned
Joined
6 Feb 2010
Posts
6,138
Location
Barnsley
i would say the system overclocked will be fine on a "good" 450W PSU, but when you start stressing the system for testing and maxing out CPU/GPU at the same time you will start to be pushing the psu to the max.

in days gone by for an OC'ed gaming system i have always use 600w but as parts now draw less power you good to drop down to 450W no problems.
its the stress testing that kill's psu's they put a silly unreal load on the system/psu.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Nov 2006
Posts
2,940
Location
London
That CPU was such old that unless PSU was by then modern and had active PFC that reading wasn't accurate.
Cheap consumer power meters don't measure non-sinusoidal current power draws correctly and show reliable reading only for power factor corrected apliances.

Review sites at the time put the power draw roughly in that area too (https://www.anandtech.com/show/2303/4) so I wouldn't say it's far off. Even review sites today put OP's CPU within 200-300w load when overclocked (https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_2700/17.html).

I'd say the reading is accurate enough to gauge what sort of capacity psu to get, rather than guess and buy a large capacity PSU for no reason.

How innaccurate does a non active PFC PSU power supply cause a reading to be? 1w, 10w, 100w or 1000w out?
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
How innaccurate does a non active PFC PSU power supply cause a reading to be? 1w, 10w, 100w or 1000w out?
Here's one particular meter which no doubt has been sold also under many other brand names:
http://jahonen.kapsi.fi/Electronics/PowerQuality/
For non-PFC PC it gave 66W reading for 124W actual idle consumption (Pentium 4s didn't know meaning of idle) and 102W for 180W actual draw under full CPU load.
For Harman Kardon AVR 635 shown reading was 63W for actual 112W draw.
And for old CRT TV 37-40W for 77W actual draw.
So bad power factor can cause really major errors for cheap power meters.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Apr 2014
Posts
18,539
Location
Aberdeen
I ran my 3770S (65W) + Titan X (250W) system on a 460W PSU, so you should be fine if you don't overclock. I don't know how the Ryzen's power consumption increases as you overclock.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2013
Posts
3,774
Location
Yorkshire
Like others have said, just buy a meter to read how much your pulling, it saves all the guessing when you start pushing your overclocks.

I was worried about pushing my 850 psu a bit far when I upgraded my 7950 crossfire setup to 290x cards so I bought a multi meter and found they were only pulling 750w at the wall, and same again for my 980tis, they only pulled 820w at the wall so a £15 power meter saved a £150 PSU upgrade on both occasions.

Don't forget to times your pull at the wall by your efficiency rating of your PSU to work out how much your drawing from the PSU.

I used to use it for setting up power limit profiles for the GPUS and CPU on the PC also which halfed the amount of power I was drawing when playing less demanding games, although I imagine the newer hardware does that for ya since they seem to keep banging on about efficiency nowadays.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
1 Apr 2014
Posts
18,539
Location
Aberdeen
I bought a multi meter and found they were only pulling 750w at the wall,

To expand on this a little, the power rating of a PSU - one from a reputable manufacturer anyway - is the maximum power it can output, not the maximum input power, so, assuming 80% efficiency, when @BluD's PSU was pulling 750W from the wall it was providing only 600W to his PC, well under the 850W capacity. Even at 90% efficiency, it would have been providing only 675W, still well within capacity.
 
Back
Top Bottom